Open Space Advisory Board Agenda and Packet 2023 07 12

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If Council will be considering changes, what changes would you recommend? OSAB sent a memo to council last month advocating for keeping OSAB as a separate board, and we continue to feel strongly about that. We would also like to see a streamlined process for delivering memos to Council, to make the process no harder and hopefully easier than it is for a member of the public to contact Council. We would like to re -institute a regular true Council study session (not just an informal dinner) as this provides valuable face-to-face time among all board and all City Council members. We would also like to see the council liaison restored as that is very useful for bringing information directly to the board to avoid what can be costly time delays if other communication techniques are used. It also provides an important first-hand conduit to the Council of OSAB's concerns and priorities. We feel that both of these improvements are necessary since a liaison is an individual who does not necessarily represent the view of the whole Council and might not be able to attend all of our board meetings. On the topic of term limits, there wasn't necessarily a board consensus on whether there should be term limits, but there was agreement that if there are term limits they should be quite long in duration to take advantage of members' knowledge and experience on issues that span many years. Do you feel that your body has been effective or ineffective? Why? The board felt that it had already addressed this question in the discussion of the successes and failures question above. City Council has an informal policy of managing meeting time and canceling or reducing meeting times when agendas are light. What are the practices of your body in regards to agenda development, meeting duration, and meeting tempo? The board has many responsibilities under its purview and sometimes spends too long on discussions and occasionally wants to consider issues not listed on the agenda. However, overall the board feels that it does a good job managing meeting topics and duration. Next Steps: We hope that the city manager's office and City Council find our responses to these questions valuable and that they are factored into any recommendations of changes to the structure of boards and commissions. In particular, we hope that these timely responses are helpful in the upcoming discussion at the June 6 City Council meeting.